


Summer Love

by somekindoflark



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Crack, Gen, charles does not either, erik does not, sean has a lot of free time, sean loves love, sean ships charles/erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1596389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindoflark/pseuds/somekindoflark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He’s just so heart-broken,” Sean says.  </p>
<p>Hank blinks.  “Charles?” he asks.  There are a lot of words he’d apply to Charles Xavier right now – childish, brilliant, resigned, caring, smug, nutritionally deficient, far too fond of attaching rockets to his wheelchair – but…</p>
<p>Sean sighs again and, his breakfast untouched, drifts sadly out of the room.</p>
<p>Hank stares suspiciously at the cereal and makes a mental note to remove all boxes of it from the pantry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Love

Sean sighs into his pink and green cereal.  “It’s so tragic.” 

Hank follows Sean’s gaze down the table to Charles, who is competing with two giggling 8 year olds to see who can stuff the most grapes in their mouth and who Hank suspects is also telepathically influencing the cook _again_ into giving him more bacon than is good for him.

“He’s just so heart-broken,” Sean says. 

Hank blinks.  “Charles?” he asks.  There are a lot of words he’d apply to Charles Xavier right now – childish, brilliant, resigned, caring, smug, nutritionally deficient, far too fond of attaching rockets to his wheelchair – but…

Sean sighs again and, his breakfast untouched, drifts sadly out of the room.

Hank stares suspiciously at the cereal and makes a mental note to remove all boxes of it from the pantry.

 

 

Later that day he catches Sean interrogating Charles.

“Professor-”

“Charles-” Charles corrects.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Oh, many times, my friend,” Charles says.  He begins flicking up fingers.  “Six,” he says eventually.  “Well, six-and-a-half.”  He grins.  “I was six and wanted her ice cream.  I’m not sure my motives were entirely pure.”

“But were they all the same?  Was there one that was different?”

Charles hesitates.  “I suppose…”

From his position by the door, Hank can see Sean’s whole body tense.

“How- did you ever get over it?”

“Oh, that was years ago,” Charles says.  “It was when we first moved to Oxford.  These things do pass, you know.  It may not seem like it at the time, but one day you wake up and they’re not the first thing in your mind, and the next day you don’t think of them until you’ve brushed your teeth, and then…”

Sean blinks back tears and flings himself out the open window.  Hank and Charles watch him fly away to the sounds of a melancholy wail that strongly suggests the maker is planning to inform the entire county of the terrible burden of his endless heartbreak.

Charles looks at Hank.

Hank shrugs.

 

 

Unlike Alex, who comes and goes in a rhythm no one but Charles seems to understand, probably because only Charles peeks into people’s brains while they’re sleeping, when Sean is at home from college for summer break, he’s at home for summer break.

“Hank, Hank, Hank,” says Sean, spinning around on a lab stool.

Hank contemplates stabbing him with the injection currently in his hand, then reconsiders.  Charles, as he has made clear more than once, does not approve of stabbing people, and Hank has already destroyed four labs this year.

“What?” Hank snaps instead.

“Want to see what I made?”

“No,” Hank says truthfully.  He puts the injection carefully into its case and reaches for the next one.  Mutants or no, children need vaccinations, and Hank has after a long struggle with his conscience timed this round so that he and Charles will be at a scientific conference when it’s administered.

Sean reaches under the counter and brings out the thing that Hank knows is going to haunt his dreams for months.

It’s big.

It’s pink.

It’s shaped like a heart.

It’s decorated with roses.

And it’s covered with pictures of Charles and Lensherr.

Hank can feel his mouth opening and closing, searching desperately for something – anything – that will make this all go away.  “What-”

“It took me weeks,” Sean says.  “The CIA is really hard to break into.”

Against his will, Hanks looks closer.  Some of the images are the grainy kind he’s seen before in surveillance photos.  “You broke into the CIA to get pictures of Lensherr!?”

“Not just of him,” Sean says scornfully.  “Of them _together_.”

Hanks’ traitorous eyes drift to the middle of the heart.  Has Sean cut that picture so the two of them are holding hands? 

He has.

The one below it is worse.

“The art class helped,” Sean admits.

Hank can tell.  He wishes he couldn’t, because now he’s imagining Sean telling nine year old David that Lensherr’s pectoral muscles need to be larger, but he recognizes Ororo’s careful cutting, Brian’s lopsided hearts, and the bald Charles Jean insists on drawing even when it means poor empathetic Ivan spends the rest of the day following Charles around with a mirror and none of the children get haircuts for weeks.

Hank wishes a lot of things.

 

 

Hank knocks on the study door.  “Charles?” he says, the words coming out in the growl that after five years he’s still not quite used to.

“Come in.” 

When Hank enters, Charles is staring across the lawn at Sean, who is cutting a heart.  Into the topiary.  By the fountain.  Whose water is now pink.

Sean sees them and waves the clippers enthusiastically.

Charles and Hank wave weakly back.

“Has he… said anything to you?” Charles asks.

“No,” Hank lies, and tries not to think of the poem.  “Do you know?”

Charles stares at the topiary.  “No,” he lies, in the tone of a man who has obviously seen the art project in someone’s mind and spent three successive evenings getting drunk, and is perfectly willing to continue the pattern until the problem goes away.

Hank’s so glad the two of them teach Ethics.

 

 

“I have called this secret meeting-”

“You announced it at lunch.”

“This secret meeting, to announce my Plan.”

Alex and Hank exchange weary looks.

“Charles is not heart-broken,” Alex says.  “He hit on a waitress _this morning_.”

“That is only a pitiful distraction from his secret pain,” Sean explains.

“It’s really, really not,” Alex says.

“Wrong,” says Sean.  “Which is why we – his best friends – are going to reunite him with his one true love.”

“No,” Hank says, in the hope that maybe if he says it just one more time, Sean will listen.  Or at least put down the collage heart.  Whichever.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Alex says.

Sean sniffs.  “Fine.  I guess it’s up to me then.”

 

 

Charles spends a week sleeping in secret locations.  After Tuesday’s incident, Hank doesn’t blame him.

 

 

The Xavier Academy stares at the lawn and the twenty foot, bright blue letters on it.

“He misspelled ‘Lensherr’,” Ivan says.

 

 

Two weeks after the attempted fake kidnapping (Hank is starting to understand why Charles sleeps and breakfasts in the liquor cabinet now), Hank opens the front door to find Erik Lensherr staring at him.

Erik shoves a soggy card at him.  “What the _fuck_ is going on?”

It’s only because he spent most of the night stalking Sean as Sean stalked Charles to get him to talk about his feelings that Hank is fool enough to look down.

On the front is a series of stick people gathered around a bed.  The tallest one is wearing a helmet and a cape.  On the other side a group of children are huddled around three taller figures.  In the bed is a brown-haired, blue-eyed corpse whose face is contorted in pain.  The whole thing is pitted with greenish water stains that smell a lot like the garden pond, and at the bottom is, “IT MIGHT BE TOO LATE!!!”  Inside is the Westchester address neatly printed and a sketch of the house with three arrows pointing to Charles’ window.

“I’m getting Charles,” Hank says.

Erik tries to follow him inside.

Hank slams the (all-wood) door in his face.

 

 

Charles is in the kitchen.  Fortunately he’s being a saint today.  It’s easy to tell, because he’s wearing a tattered cardboard halo.  Plus, no one in his vicinity thinks they’re a squirrel (Charles only sometimes wears the devil horns David made him – he claims doing so all the time wouldn’t be in character – so on those days Hank just follows the trail of nuts).

“Hank!” Charles says.  “You’re just in time for ice cream.”

Jean beams and Ororo nods shyly.

“Erik’s here,” Hank says.

The ice cream container wobbles.

“Why-”

Hank doesn’t have words to explain the card, so he just thinks the image at Charles.

“Whiskey,” Charles says.

“And ice cream,” Jean reminds him sternly.

“If you give us ice cream, we won’t bite him,” Ororo promises.

“Definitely not then,” Charles mutters, before shaking his head.  “No.  Sorry.  We shouldn’t bite people.  I’ll be right back.”

Hank follows Charles back to the front door.  He opens it to find Erik and Sean.  Sean is dressed as a troubadour, holding a guitar, and weeping onto Erik’s shoulder.  Erik is visibly regretting both their existences.

“You’re together at last!” Sean howls.  “I knew your love would never die.”

“Sean is convinced we’re in love,” Charles explains.  "It's been... difficult."

“I wrote a ballad about it,” Sean says proudly.

Hank and Charles shudder. 

Erik looks with concern at the dark circles under Charles’ eyes from the all-night poker tournament.  “Are you…”

Charles peers up at Erik.  He has his plotting face on, the one that usually ends in things like, “And that, Hank, is why I have decided that it will be _educational_ for the children to participate in the demolition.”  “It has been a bit stressful,” he admits, slumping in his chair.

“Charles hasn’t slept well in weeks,” Hank says.  “We have all the younger mutants to take care of,” he adds accusingly, because _he_ knows who put Betty on his doorstep, and no matter what Charles says, it was not a kindly stork.

Erik stares at Sean.  “I could take him with me,” he offers.

He’d offered to take Hank once.  Charles had stalked him via Cerebro and ruined all his sex for weeks.  And that had been Charles being _nice_.  When Erik had offered to take Scott, Hank was fairly sure Charles had actually burned down Erik’s house.

“Oh Erik, I couldn’t possibly,” Charles beams up at him, “Say no.  Thank you so much, my friend.”

Erik blinks.

“I-”

“I’ll go help him pack and send him right out.  Wouldn’t want you to be late for dinner!  So good of you, Erik, really.  Come, Sean!” He smiles gratefully and flees.

Erik looks horrified.  “But-”

Jean bites him.

 

 

Sean takes his entire portfolio of love pictures with him as well as the banners, the anatomically encouraging puppets, and the t-shirts.  Charles, Hank, and Jean wave good-bye.

“If anyone can change his mind,” Hank overhears Charles tell Sean soulfully, “It is you, my dear, dear friend.”

Erik is still staring at the lawn in horror as he drives off.

The ice cream is delicious.


End file.
